


No Sign of Life (But I Got A Hunch It's Not Over Yet)

by ridakulous



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Fucking, Guns, Kissing, Swearing, ZOMBIES!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 16:29:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1751174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ridakulous/pseuds/ridakulous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost 4k Words. Dark Zombie Fic featuring the entire glee club. Quinn POV. Read at your own discretion. People die.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Some nights, Quinn thinks of Yale. She knows it’s the absolute worst thing she can do at two in the morning, taunting herself with images of what-ifs and the future, but she can’t help it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Sign of Life (But I Got A Hunch It's Not Over Yet)

There’s tension everywhere. It’s to be expected when they’re toeing the line at the end of the world, but the expectation doesn’t make living through it any more bearable. It’s thick and suffocating, so much worse than the strong Lima sun or the Fabray’s pool that has turned an odd shade of green and looked too risky for even Puck to jump in. Everything is cramped, tight, because survival is a numbers game and they’re sorely losing. There are three tents for nine people and it’s hard to maneuver when you’re a wrong twist and turn away from spooning your ex-enemy. There’s even less food than there is space and the sun feels like it never stops. But the worst is the tension.

It starts when Puck dies, a walker gnawing through half of his calf before they manage to put him down. It was supposed to be routine, or as routine as it gets in the middle of the apocalypse. Sweep the streets, double check the side alleys near base and get back ASAP.

But Quinn’s scared and Puck turns away from the side alley for one second, one second, to comfort her. Quinn’s staring at his bright eyes and soft smile, the one that was born around the same time as their daughter, and the next thing she knows Puck is on the ground, one of those monsters chewing on his leg with a vicious snarl. They manage to make it back to base with him hobbling, trying not to put too much weight on Quinn’s shoulders when the guilt and desperation are already pushing down so heavily.

He squeezes Tina’s hand and waggles his finger and eyebrows at her when she tries to kiss him.

“I know your games, girl-Chang,” he teases, playfully, like he isn’t about to die. Tina mutters out something that sounds like idiot, but then Puck’s eyes go out of focus and Tina’s clutching onto his hand like she can keep him here if she tries hard enough. Quinn swallows hard.

“My idiot,” she amends softly and Puck’s adoring smile looks wide enough to split his face. It leaves a bad taste in Quinn’s mouth, one she doesn’t have enough water to wash out on their rationed supplies. She turns to look away as Tina wipes the sweat off his brow with one of their last clean towels, the moment too intimate for her to not feel like she’s intruding. She turns to walk away when Puck calls out to her, his voice weaker than before.

“Fabray, Lopez,” and Quinn stills, turning and trying not to look at Puck. Santana walks over, a grim look on her face and it’s only then that Quinn remembers how close both of them actually were outside of school.

“Fabray,” he says more insistently, and she looks into his eyes – when did he grow up and get so serious? When did they all get so serious? - and he nods at her. It says everything, the look he’s giving her. That it isn’t her fault. That she needs to stay strong. That he loves her. The guilt sinks in deeper, and Quinn’s pretty sure she’ll never be able to scoop it out.

“Take care of my girl, will ya?” He pauses to cough and weakly slug Santana in the shoulder and tell her to stop being such a chick. Quinn can see the tears shining in Tina’s eyes.

“And yours.” It’s the last thing she’ll ever hear Puck say, and not even ten minutes later the telltale sound of a gunshot cuts through her own silence. It’s the first night she crawls into Rachel’s arms, begging and pleading and sobbing. The tension only grows.

~~

Santana cries the hardest when Sam dies. He’s been a bit reckless, a bit too careless, since Puck died and no one could talk any sense into him. It’s Sam who signs up for every extra patrol, who would wander out at night to look up at the stars, who refuses to wear the cumbersome body armor in the middle of summer. She wonders for a minute if Sam actually was gay, because that anger and loss behind his eyes doesn’t seem very friendly.

Thinking about it feels foreign as the words float through her head, because how important is who you want to date when there are bloodthirsty monsters trying to rip you apart? All of her old problems and reservations seem so mundane, so useless and petty when every day is a struggle for life.

They bury Sam, Santana and Brittany, taking turns shoveling into the dirt, and everyone left in their group takes their time to speak a soft goodbye. Rachel’s is surprisingly short, Quinn notices, and when it’s finally her turn to speak, nothing comes out.

Quinn feels like she’s back in sophomore year of high school when her best friend accuses her of being a soulless ice queen. She can see the pain written all over Santana’s face, but Quinn feels nothing. 

It’s an odd feeling, like she isn’t in her body but watching from her body, detached from everything around her. Maybe Santana’s right. Quinn didn’t cry when her parents died, or when Sam and Puck were stolen from her. She felt nothing when Santana held onto her for dear life, leaving bloody fingerprints on her skin and shirt.

Even now, Quinn just stares back at her, unblinking until Rachel’s tiny warm hands thread through her own and pull her back into their tent. She doesn’t snap out of it until she realizes that her and Rachel are alone, and her shoulders tense up.

“What do you want?” She asks in her best biting tone, but it only comes out tired, so very tired. Rachel’s face full of sympathy, or is that empathy? Either way it pisses Quinn off and ice queen devolves into HBIC faster than either of them can track. It’s manhands and loser and failure but Quinn can’t tell if she’s spitting the words at Rachel or at herself by the time she runs out of steam.

It’s Rachel’s chin that juts out stubbornly as she calls Quinn a child and leaves the tent with an angry flourish. It’s Rachel’s arms who wrap around her that night and whisper everything is going to be okay. It’s Rachel she ignores for a week after. The next day she learns how to shoot a pistol, wasting two magazines in target practice. Rachel watches her silently. It’s never been so loud.

~~

Four months later Quinn walks in on Rachel and Santana. She blinks, hazel eyes big and wide as she watches tan skin slide over tan skin. Santana’s mouth is sucking on Rachel’s collarbone and her fingers are caught in between their bodies. Quinn can barely make out her wrist, thrusting up, and Rachel’s lips part as her back arches off of the rough ground. She backs out of the tent, tripping over her own feet. Rachel’s too caught up in everything to notice but Santana’s wrist stills for a moment and a smirk spreads over her lips as an impatient moan rips out of Rachel’s throat.

Quinn spends the rest of the night blushing next to Tina, who doesn’t bother conversation. She’s much more reserved now and that fighting spirit, the one that Puck fell in love with, seems to have disappeared. Quinn thinks it might have died with him.

Santana and Rachel emerge from the tent for dinner and Quinn shifts uncomfortably, eating her tiny ration as fast as she can. She sends Tina back to her tent, picking up an extra night shift just so she can get away from her own thoughts. It never works. In her haste she forgets that this is Tina’s shift with Rachel, and they awkwardly shuffle around each other for most of the night. Rachel seems confused, like she doesn’t understand why Quinn is so short with her and Quinn’s just glad the night sky hides her blush well.

She’s angry and Quinn doesn’t know why. Santana sleeping with someone isn’t something new, even if there has been a dry spell since an attack on base took Brittany from them. It’s how she survived high school, and being out here with nothing but their thoughts and a growing graveyard isn’t easy on anyone. So people having sex, trying to feel alive, it makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach thinking about her best friend going at it with Rachel Berry.

Rachel shifts on the log that they’re sharing and Quinn inches away from her. She’s picky about her watches, since the Puck incident, but that doesn’t stop her from watching Rachel out of her peripherals. There’s something about the other girl that lodged under her skin so long ago that Quinn wouldn’t even begin to know how to get rid of it. And no matter how many times she tries to shake free from Rachel, it never works. It never has. Quinn clenches her teeth to glare at Rachel, who finally seems to catch on to Quinn’s looks.

“Is there something you need, Quinn?” Rachel asks in a clipped voice that masks her confusion and hurt all too well. Quinn bites back a half a dozen responses, sitting rigid for the rest of the night until Finn comes to relieve her of her watch duty. It takes her hours to fall asleep that night, staring up at the top of her tent like it has the answers she needs. Quinn tucks her pistol under her pillow and tries not to think about Rachel Berry. It doesn’t work.

~~

They have to make a trip into town. Tina, who’s in charge of rationing their food and keeping inventory, has been begging for a food run for over a week. Now that they’re down to enough food to last two days, tops, Rachel organizes the run.

The hesitation is clear throughout the camp. They have a terrible track record with keeping people alive during any trip into Lima. Puck had said it was because they had too many bodies and not enough bullets, and Quinn has to agree with him.

They have two guns in camp, and one has to remain at base at all times.Quinn holds the second one, an old pistol that Puck inherited. It was the last thing his father left him, inadvertently as the asshole fled town, and Tina had thought it would be best if she had it. Quinn likes the heavy weight of the metal in her hand; it makes her feel like she has power. Like she controls some part of her life. She can’t tell if the illusion is more painful or helpful, but she clings to it nonetheless.

Since the pistol is hers, Quinn knows she has to go into town. Finn refuses to let them go into town without a guy with them, and even if the thought is sexist Quinn knows the truth in it. The bandits are perhaps more dangerous than the zombies, at least out in rural Ohio they are. The zombies will rip you apart, as Quinn’s seen, but the bandits do things that would make you pray for a walkers’s touch. Still, the comment sets off an on-edge Rachel and Quinn glares at the shorter girl who just won’t stop talking.

“Will you shut your beak Streisand? Nobody cares.”

The camp goes quiet after that, with Finn looking away guiltily when no one jumps in to defend Rachel. Santana’s filing her nails, watching the situation with an amused smirk on her lips that Quinn wants to smack off. She seems to notice and just winks at Quinn, who takes a step towards Santana with her fists balled up. Santana jumps to her feet, and even if she is shorter than Quinn, she’s no less intimidating. It’s a show-down, like the many that mar their friendship, and no one seems to have the energy to stop them anymore.

“Watch it Q. Don’t take our your repressed, berry-flavored rage on me. I will go all Heights Adjacent on your lily white ass.”

The comment throws Quinn off-guard, and she just shoulder checks Santana as she heads for the car, not wanting to let the girl get into her head. Santana’s all about her stupid mind games, even now, and Quinn’s sick of it. She doesn’t trust Finn’s driving so she takes the drivers seat, trying not to do a double take when the quiet form of Rachel Berry slides into the backseat. Quinn eyes her, studying Rachel through the rear-view mirror as she drives the old truck near town. Rachel catches her and Quinn freezes, meeting her challenging stare through the mirror. It’s Rachel that looks away first with a heavy sigh that even Finn can’t miss.

~~

They park a sixth of a mile away from the edge of town and Quinn’s got Puck’s pistol out with the safety clicked off. Finn’s got a baseball bat wrapped in some barbed wire Sam cut off a fence a couple of months ago, and a huge backpack and dufflebag around his arms. Rachel’s clutching her own bat and even if Quinn’s never played baseball a day in her life she knows she’s holding it wrong. Quinn lets out an annoyed sigh and reaches for her hands, fixing them without saying a word. Rachel mumbles out a soft thank you and Quinn pretends like she didn’t hear it, leading the way into town.

Most of the walkers are focused in downtown Lima, which is just a street and a half with a bunch of cluttered shops near it. It’s the last place Quinn wants to be, even during the day, so they raid a gas station first. There’s two cases of water that they hide behind the counter to drag back to the truck on their walk home, but the non-perishables have been swept clean and everything else is beyond rotting. Quinn’s eyes water as they pass what’s supposed to be a small fruit stand, and when she shoves the door open it clangs loudly against the wall.

It takes them twenty minutes to make their way further into town, the loud rumbling of a motorcycle scaring the group into hiding. The backstreets of Lima are dangerous, but easy enough to navigate. Finn takes out a walker lurking around. The zombie’s missing a leg and its jaw but there’s fresh blood on his hands and Rachel whimpers when she sees it. Quinn takes an instinctive step between the walker and her, sweaty hand on the grip of her handgun tightening. Her gun’s unneeded, and Quinn turns back to stare at Rachel when Finn gives them the hand signal for okay.

“What the hell was-”

“Don’t, Quinn.”

Quinn’s sweaty palm slides against Rachel’s as they make their way further into zombie territory. Finn doesn’t notice.

~~

She fucked up. There’s panic written all over Quinn’s face and Finn has that extremely uncomfortable, constipated look on his face that only comes out when he feels guilty. And he should. Quinn could kill him, letting Rachel wander off when they’re knee-deep in zombieland. She levels the pistol, squaring her feet just like Puck taught her. Her shot catches the walker square in the head and it falls over, dropping to the ground with a sick thud.

“Where is she? Idiot.” she growls at him. Finn looks hurt at the insult but Quinn doesn’t have it in her to care when he lost Rachel. He had one job. All he had to do was keep Rachel safe as she explored the old pharmacy next door. Finn’s useless right now, looking across the street and through the aisles like Rachel’s just going to appear. There are a couple of groans, further down the street and Quinn throws the car keys to Finn, knowing that having him trail around behind her like a lost puppy will just slow her down.

“Bring the truck. Now, Finn.”

Like always, he’s good at taking direction even if he is a terrible leader, and Finn apologizes six times before taking off down the street with his backpacks. Taking a deep breath, Quinn counts to five and then exits the store. There are too many places that Rachel could be, and Quinn can’t fathom why the girl would leave Finn’s side, unarmed, to begin with. She has to take down five walkers, the stupid chime on the door drawing their attention, and in her jumbled state of mind she can’t remember how many bullets she’s used.

Quinn wishes she was stronger so that she could use a baseball bat like Finn; the gunshots are way too loud and draw the attention of everything she’s trying to avoid. Quinn’s mouth runs dry when another zombie groans over at her, and her hands shake as she pulls the trigger. How many more can she kill before her magazine’s empty? And where the hell is Rachel?

Everything in Lima had been barricaded when the outbreak hit, and Quinn knows for a fact that the bandits never came to this side of town because of how infested it is. So when she sees the door of Lima’s only pawn shop cracked open, even if it is only a couple of practically unnoticeable inches, she could cry in relief. She bolts across the street, avoiding a crawler who seems intent on following her and shuts the door behind her, locking it. Unlike the grocer, there’s no rotting food to trigger her gag reflex.

The shop’s eerily quiet, and Quinn leads with her pistol, not wanting to find any surprises. A perfectly healthy and fine Rachel Berry walks out of the backroom not even ten seconds later and Quinn’s knees go weak with relief. There’s a million insults, things to yell and scream, on the tip of her tongue just waiting for Rachel but the first thing she does is press her lips harshly against Rachel’s own, too stupidly happy to care about the consequences. It’s the most she’s felt in months.

~~

Some nights, Quinn thinks of Yale. She knows it’s the absolute worst thing she can do at two in the morning, taunting herself with images of what-ifs and the future, but she can’t help it.

She visited, twice that summer, and fell in love with New Haven. Yale itself is gorgeous, was gorgeous, but it was the city that Quinn fell in love with. It makes her furious, thinking of what could have been her future. How she could be laying in her dorm bed right now, worrying about her English Comp paper, or sitting on her bed with chicken-flavored Ramen balanced in her lap as she studies for mid-terms.

Instead she has a backache from the unforgiving ground and she hasn’t had a proper home-cooked meal in over a year. Her ex-boyfriend and the father of her child died in front of her and she’s stuck, curled up on her side and in the arms of Rachel freaking Berry, living in a tent. Quinn’s not sure if what she’s doing could actually be called living, but when Rachel shifts and runs a sleepy hand through Quinn’s hair, she closes her eyes and prays to a God she isn’t sure exists that she’ll die in her sleep, happy.

~~

Santana disappears from her life. Quinn knows it’s her own fault, but there’s too much hostility and bad blood between them. They don’t hunt together, don’t patrol together and they rarely eat at the same time. It tears Quinn apart, mostly because Santana’s one of the only anchors to her past that’s left.

She can’t look at Finn anymore without being angry, or at Tina without thinking about Puck. It’s selfish and wrong, but when Quinn’s with Santana she can disappear. She doesn’t have to be Quinn Fabray survivor. Instead it’s HBIC Quinn Fabray, or chaste virgin Quinn Fabray, or even pregnant Quinn Fabray. Santana is her past, wrapped up in a neat, defective package. The past isn’t scary or going to kill her like the present is. The past is familiar. The past is something she can never get back. And Rachel, she’s Quinn’s future, which is infinitely scarier.

She catches Santana coming out of Tina’s tent early one morning – they are so few of them left that it’s practically her own – and they stare for awhile. Santana’s waiting, the waves of aggression nearly pouring off her, but Quinn just stares. After a minute or so she nods and Santana’s shoulders slump as she takes the seat next to Quinn.

“I still love Brittany,” she says after awhile, and Quinn wants to reach out and touch her damaged best friend. She knows it won’t help. And what if she shatters?

“I know.”

~~

When they fuck it isn’t beautiful. It’s ugly and gritty and everything that the world around them has forced them be. There’s no relief, no special moment that clicks and promises that everything is going to be alright. They both know it isn’t.

Rachel’s pants are still on, sticking to her thighs as Quinn’s fingers push into her and she muffles her moan into Quinn’s neck, the thought of biting her utterly repulsive. She can feel Quinn’s pulse, fast and wild against her lips and cheeks and when she groans out a soft Quinn it spikes. It’s gorgeous, feeling her heartbeat, feeling how alive Quinn is, when everything is death and destruction and pain everywhere else she turns. The blood thrums in Rachel’s ears as she’s swept up in the most intense orgasm of her short life and they fall asleep curled around each other, half dressed and every bit as broken-looking as they feel.

When Rachel wakes up the next morning Quinn won’t be there. The flush on her cheeks, of arousal and shame, will be the most alive she’s looked in months. She won’t meet Rachel’s eyes the next day, not even when the walker’s teeth marks swell and bruise around Rachel’s shoulder and a Glock is pressed to her temple. Because living isn’t surviving anymore, living was never surviving, and Quinn Fabray can’t feel anything when there’s an empty spot in her tent and heart where Rachel Berry should be.

They find her body, crumpled up next to Rachel after the gun shot echos through their makeshift camp. It’s three fifty-seven in the morning and Quinn’s hands are slack around Rachel’s smaller ones, pressed loosely above Quinn’s heart. Their foreheads are leaning into each other like the world isn’t ending. Maybe, for them, it isn’t.


End file.
